Thanks everybody -- this is super helpful! I'm gonna mull this over and then come back and read it all again and mull it over some more (and visit everyone's websites and the websites of authors I read and then think about it some more)... I had a barebones website put together, but I don't think it...

I'm in the early stages of creating a website. I chose to go with a website versus a blog because I don't want to be constrained to the time requirements that regular blog posting demands -- and I think I want something a bit more static than dynamic. I'm also going to a few writers conferences this...

I'm in the querying stage with my novel and I'm getting rejection after rejection. It occurred to me a while back that my novel would fall under the category of soft sci-fi, whereas the agents I've been querying tend to deal in hard sci-fi. I've tried searching for soft sci-fi agents, but seem to ha...

What is the intended audience age range of your book? But as far as that sort of squick goes -- the sci-fi novels "Warchild" and "Cagebird" (particularly "Cagebird") by Karin Lowachee have those sorts of things going on from time to time. "Cagebird," if I recall correctly, features a young boy being...

I don't use eReaders -- but eBooks through Kobo (Chapters/Indigo) or Kindle (Amazon) are on their associated websites, right? So am I looking in the right place? Is this a Canadian publisher? Generally speaking, American and Canadian publishing and distribution rights are separately negotiated. Als...

I would be skeptical of a house that took five years to publish two books and contained such a dearth of submissions that they could ask for an entire manuscript. I think I may have been slightly unclear -- they have dozens of publications on their website -- but only two are listed on Amazon and C...

which reminds me, I lost (sniff) my LITTLE BROWN HANDBOOK (I think that's the title) my History Prof required us to use. I had to use that in one of my first year university courses -- it was the most useful book I've ever had on writing (at least for essays when it comes to the various referencing...

Was the conference (or whatever) a reputable event? Did they have pitch sessions? Usually conferences do some amount of vetting of the representatives they have on hand. USUALLY. This small company could legitimately just be getting started. It may succeed, it may not. It's possible it's a scam, bu...

Sorry for disappearing for so long! I made a writer friend at the pitch session and we've become fast friends and are currently reading each others work and providing edits to each other. I've never had a writer friend like that -- we talked about punctuation for an hour and never got bored... Anywa...

As I mentioned in another thread in "All Things Finding an Agent," I was at an editor pitch session this past weekend. There were three editors there, two of which buy short fiction and were thus were not interested in my novel. (Though one of them did go through my synopsis line by line and give me...

Thanks all! So the general consensus here seems to be that it's entirely dependent on the way the story is told (with a few restrictions, such as it shouldn't be your main character/narrator). I play fast and loose with a few other conventions, which have been discussed on this board before with the...

I ran my novel synopsis past some editors at a pitch session at a sci fi convention this past weekend. Overall it went very good, but I was told I had an issue that needed to be resolved... I have multiple viewpoint characters told in third person. One of the secondary characters (Trent), who is a v...

If this were Facebook, I'd click "Like" -- thanks Nathan! I got an email from the organiser of this event with the following directions... ----- As our schedule only allows for 15 minute meetings the editors have asked that you hand in your manuscripts prior to the sit down meeting so they have the ...

I got wind of the news that there's an editor pitch session at the local upcoming SFF convention... so I registered for the convention (and thus achieved a new level of nerdiness) and applied for a spot in the pitch session... I know pitch sessions have come up from time to time on Bransford's blog,...